Media&Marketing:The advent of desktop publishing software, digital imagery and increased availability of quality colour printing has spawned a huge growth in the number of magazines competing for the consumer's attention, writes Siobhán O'Connell.
Faced with all this choice, buyers are becoming increasingly fickle over whether they buy a magazine or not; they are not particularly loyal to a given title and they are impulsive over where they buy the title.
Despite all this - and competition from UK giants - the Irish magazine sector is thriving. The Periodical Publishers' Association of Ireland (PPAI) estimates that 400,000 Irish-published magazines are sold every week in the Republic. Throughout October the PPAI will be attempting to raise the profile of this success story with its Irish Magazine Month promotion in 2,000 retail outlets.
However, the magazine sector is not without its problems. Andrew Walmsley, news director of Easons Wholesale News, explains: "Of our top 50 best-selling magazines, 40 per cent were launched since the year 2000. The growth of weeklies is a major trend, reflecting the desire of the time-poor consumer for a quick read. While the overall magazine market has grown, the slice of the cake going to each title has shrunk."
The downside of this churn in promotional activities and growth in titles is that retailers are struggling to find the space to display magazines properly. Newsagents also feel that they are being lumbered with too many new titles and too much stock of existing titles.
Contributing to this aggravation has been the long-standing practice of most Irish publishers of splitting their newsagent supply between Easons and Newspread, the two distributors. This resulted in the situation - practically unique in Europe - where shops would receive supplies of the same magazine from two sources.
However, in the past 12 months Easons and Newspread have started competing for sole distribution agreements. Easons stole a march on Newspread (owned by Independent News & Media) by securing the exclusive contract to distribute many of the most popular UK and US magazines, including Closer, FHM, Grazia, Hello, Heat, Cosmopolitan, Esquire, Prima, Glamour, Vanity Fair and Vogue.
Newspread has been fighting back and, with its sister company WNS in Northern Ireland, it is offering publishers a wholesale and distribution service covering both the Republic and the North. Newspread has been successful in cosying up to the PPAI and it is pitching itself as a specialist distributor for Irish-owned titles.
Since the start of 2007, Newspread has won exclusivity with Image Publications, publishers of Image and Image Interiors; Dyflin, which publishes House & Home, Prudence and Confetti; and Harmonia, the largest indigenous publisher of consumer magazines, with titles such as U, Irish Tatler, Woman's Way and Food & Wine.
Exclusive contracts should make it easier for distributors to assist with waste collection and Walmsley says that Easons has committed to rolling out full-copy collection of unsolds in cities and towns, provided that retailers support the initiative.
"This service will take away the cost to the retailer of disposing of unsold magazines, improve their cash flow and improve the accuracy and speed with which net sales information is collected."
But retailers are up in arms at both Easons and Newspread over proposed increases in the charge for their delivery and collection service. Tara Buckley, director-general of the trade body RGDATA, says distributors have added to retailers' costs for years by "dumping" unordered copies of publications on them. She added: "They have also proved unresponsive to retailers who have been seeking credits for unsold copies of publications. These companies are doing their utmost to make selling newspapers and magazines an unattractive proposition."
Despite the hassle, and the increasing cost, very few convenience stores choose not to stock magazines. Magazines attract footfall and the margins are good. But shops will carry fewer titles in future. As part of its revamped service, Easons is promising to give retailers control over any changes in the range of magazines stocked.
